ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, zeroed in on the critical battleground of Pennsylvania on Monday, rallying voters just eight days before polls close.
Trump drew thousands of supporters, many of them maskless, as he began a final-week charge through nearly a dozen states ahead of the election. Biden, in an effort to take a cautious approach and show that he's taking the pandemic seriously, greeted a few dozen supporters outside a campaign field office in Chester.
"Bottom line is Donald Trump is the worst possible person to lead us through this pandemic," Biden said as he sharpened his closing message into an indictment of Trump's handling of the coronavirus. Trump, meanwhile, criticized Biden's plans to address the outbreak.
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"It's a choice between a Trump boom or a Biden lockdown," Trump said at a rally in Allentown, focusing on the economy and the possibility of lost jobs.
Trump's campaign schedule took him to Pennsylvania as he tries to hold a state that he won in 2016 and that's viewed by his aides as critical to his path to 270 electoral votes. Biden, meanwhile, is signaling that he's hoping to expand his campaign map.
In the closing days, Biden plans to visit Georgia, a state that hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992, and Iowa, which Trump carried by more than 9 percentage points in 2016. Biden is dispatching his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, to Texas, which hasn't backed a Democrat for the White House since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
With more than a third of the expected ballots in the election already cast, it could become increasingly challenging for Trump or Biden to reshape the contours of the race. But both men are fighting for any late advantage.
Biden is leading Trump in most national polls and has an advantage, though narrower, in many key battlegrounds. Four years ago, however, Democrat Hillary Clinton also enjoyed a lead over Trump in national and some state polls, and Democrats say their complacency doomed their candidate.
While the final week of the campaign is colliding with deepening concerns about the covid-19 crisis in many parts of the U.S., Trump has worked to shift the focus to other issues. Biden, meanwhile, is working to ensure the race is about the pandemic, hitting Trump on the virus and trying to present himself as a safer, more stable alternative.
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The stakes were clear over the weekend as the White House became the focus of a second outbreak of the virus in a month. Several close aides to Vice President Mike Pence tested positive, including his chief of staff, Marc Short. Pence, though, is maintaining his political calendar even though he was deemed a close contact, claiming the status of an essential employee.
Pence arrived at a rally in Hibbing, Minn., wearing a mask Monday, but he removed it as he reached the podium to speak to a crowd of supporters who were largely not wearing face coverings or practicing social distancing.
The recent coronavirus surge in parts of the country has provided a sign of the divergent approaches the campaigns have taken. On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said that "we're not going to control the pandemic," adding the focus should be on containment and treatment.
Biden, in a statement, said Meadows' comments continued with the Trump administration waving "the white flag of defeat" in the face of the virus.
Trump fired back Monday as he arrived in Pennsylvania, saying Biden, with his concerns about the virus's spread, has "waved a white flag on life."
He rejected Biden's comments that the nation is facing a "dark winter," saying: "No, it's not going to be a dark winter. It's going to be a great winter. It's going to be a great spring."
Biden's team argues the virus is likely to blot out any other issues that might come up in the final days of the campaign -- including his recent debate-stage comment in which he affirmed he'd transition away from oil, which he later tried to walk back as a transition away from federal subsidies.
Trump and his team have struggled to settle on a closing message. He's grasped for dirt on his Democratic rival and described a Biden presidency as a threat to Americans' way of life, but Biden has thus far proved more resistant to such strategies than Clinton.
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Anticipating a razor-thin Electoral College margin, Trump is keeping an aggressive schedule, including a visit to Omaha, Neb., today after a Sunday visit to Maine, aiming to lock up one electoral vote in each of the states that award them by congressional district. Trump is scheduled to hold a dizzying 11 rallies in the 48 hours before polls close.
Biden is sitting on more campaign cash than Trump and is putting it to use, blanketing airwaves with a nearly 2-to-1 advantage over the final two weeks. The campaign ads feature both upbeat messages and blistering criticism of Trump's handling of the pandemic.
Democrats have been heartened by their lead in the record numbers of early votes that have been cast across a number of battleground states -- though they caution that Republicans are more likely to turn out on Election Day and are` certain to make up ground.
BLACK AMERICANS
Meanwhile, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner said Monday that Black people must "want to be successful" in order for the administration's policies to help them.
"One thing we've seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump's policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they're complaining about," Kushner said Monday on "Fox & Friends." "But he can't want them to be successful more than they want to be successful."
Trump's campaign believes he's drawing more Black support for his reelection than in his 2016 run, thanks to policies including legislation he signed to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent offenders, increase spending for historically Black colleges and universities, and provide new tax benefits for investors in low-income communities.
"What you're seeing throughout the country now is a groundswell of support in the Black community because they're realizing that all the different bad things that the media and the Democrats have said about President Trump are not true, and so they're seeing that he's actually delivered," Kushner said. "President Trump may not always say the right things, but he does the right things. He says what's on his mind, and he gets results."
Kushner's remarks were defended by the White House as they drew criticism on Twitter, where Democrats said he was implying that many Black people don't want to be successful.
"Jared Kushner was born into wealth and he married into wealth. He's never had to 'want' success, let alone earn it. All he's had to do is be in the right place at the right time," Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., tweeted. "This is a breathtaking insult to the hard-working people who actually make this country great."
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a statement saying "internet trolls" had taken Kushner's remarks out of context, and that "there is simply no disputing that President Trump accomplished what Democrats merely talked about" in aiding Black Americans.
BALLOT-BOX FIRE
In Boston, a man was charged with setting a ballot drop box on fire and damaging dozens of ballots, police said Monday.
Worldy Armand, a 39-year-old Boston resident, was taken into custody late Sunday, hours after he started a fire in the drop box outside the Boston Public Library in the city's Back Bay neighborhood, authorities said. The box contained more than 120 ballots.
Armand faces a charge of willful and malicious burning, police said. It was not clear whether he has an attorney to speak for him. The FBI had said Sunday that it's investigating. Federal authorities urged members of the public to "remain vigilant and immediately report any suspicious, election-related activity."
The top prosecutor for Boston, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins, told reporters that Armand appears to be "emotionally disturbed" and that she does not believe he is "plotting against our democracy."
Massachusetts' elections chief said he has directed local officials to boost security at drop boxes with guards and video surveillance, and to empty the boxes frequently.
It's the second fire reported at a ballot box in the U.S. this month. A fire in a Los Angeles County drop box is also being investigated as arson, authorities said last week.
MARYLAND VOTING
In Maryland, voters lined up for blocks in the semidarkness early Monday to cast ballots on the first day that in-person early voting was permitted in the state.
With mail-in ballots already at historic levels in Maryland, public officials had not known whether to expect the huge turnout that materialized with the launch of in-person voting in dozens of other states.
But by the time polls opened at 7 a.m., long lines of hundreds of voters had formed outside early-voting centers. People wore masks, and some had face shields and gloves.
Gladis Richardson took a chair with her to Kentland Community Center in Prince George's County so she could take the weight off her broken ankle while waiting in line.
Richardson, 63, of Capitol Heights, said she tried to vote via mail-in ballot but accidentally wrote down her birthday where she was supposed to write the current date. So she discarded that ballot and went to vote in person.
Across the nation, more than 58 million people have already cast ballots by mail, drop box or in person -- more than 124% of the 2016 early-vote total.
Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Alexandra Jaffe, Kevin Freking, Aamer Madhani, Jonathan Lemire, Mohamed Ibrahim and Alanna Durkin Richer of The Associated Press; by Ovetta Wiggins, Rebecca Tan, Rachel Chason and Erin Cox of The Washington Post; and by Jennifer Jacobs and Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou of Bloomberg News.
